Larkin Street Youth Services: helping kids get off the street for good (1982-2007)

Larkin Street Youth Services is a pioneering nonprofit organization that was established in 1981 to serve the growing urban homeless and runaway youth population. What began as a neighborhood effort has evolved into a $12 million organization over the course of its 25-year history. Larkin Street Youth Services delivers a continuum of services to homeless youth including counseling, housing, education, employment, and HIV services. The agency has received significant local and national attention for the success of its targeted program model and continuum of care services. The history of Larkin Street Youth Services provides an example of the important role of internal operations in an agency's ability to re-invent itself and respond to a larger community need.     

Psychosocial Correlates and Consequences of Adolescents’ Self‐Generated Academic Goals and Appraisals

The current study examined whether characteristics of adolescents (i.e., externalizing problems) and their environments (i.e., social support, adverse childhood experiences) relate to academic goal setting, appraisals, and outcomes. Adolescents (n = 99; 87% Black/African American) 13–16 years old completed baseline interviews, and 80% also completed follow‐up interviews. Adolescents with more externalizing problems set fewer academic goals, and youth with social networks characterized by greater support (and less strain) appraised their academic goals as more supported and achievable. Adolescents’ appraisals of their academic goals, but not how many academic goals they had, predicted grades at follow‐up. Increasing social support (and reducing social strain) may foster adolescents’ positive appraisals of their academic goals, which may promote academic achievement.     

The role of aspirations and aspirations adaptation in explaining satisficing and bounded rationality

The explanation of bounded rationality in terms of satisficing has been received with skepticism, but Simon's claim that satisficing reflects aspirations and their adaptation could help resolve the matter, particularly taking account of the amplifications introduced by Selten to include motivational factors. Experimental investigations by Guth and his colleagues provide some support. Open-ended, in-depth interviews by Bewley and Schwartz help explain the factors that influence aspirations (which may differ for different tasks), giving attention to affective influences and also to context. They suggest a positive but more complicated relationship between the relative success in realizing profits aspirations and the adaptation of those aspirations, and also in the consequences that aspiration levels have for bounded rationality.     

Attitudes of Palestinian pre‐school teachers from Israel towards reporting of suspected cases of child abuse and neglect

The paper documents a study conducted among 225 Palestinian pre‐school teachers from Israel. Data were collected through a self‐administered questionnaire that examined the teachers’ attitudes towards reporting child abuse and neglect. In general, the participants’ attitudes towards reporting child abuse and neglect to the child protection services (CPS) were more positive than their attitudes towards reporting to the police. Willingness to report suspected cases of child sexual abuse to the police and CPS was higher than willingness to report other types of child abuse and neglect. Inconsistent results were revealed with regard to how awareness of reporting regulations and awareness of signs and risk factors for child maltreatment affect willingness to report to CPS and to the police. A comprehensive discussion of the possible relevance of the participants’ socio‐cultural and sociopolitical values to their attitudes towards reporting child abuse and neglect is presented. The implications of the results for future studies are also discussed.     

Emerson,Cooley, and the American Heroic Vision*

Willful leaders and mindless masses are governing images in Carlyle's and Nietzsche's romantic conception of political domination. In contrast, the nineteenth century American notion of heroic leadership was inspired by liberal sentiment and drew mainly on classical republican definitions of greatness. These sentiments and definitions supplied the basis for Ralph Waldo Emerson's theory of heroes and hero worship. The first part of this paper shows how the tension between elitist and democratic conceptions of the hero permeated Emerson's early work, and how this tension was finally resolved in his essays on representative men. The second part of the paper deals with Charles Horton Cooley's admiration of Emerson, and the affinity between Emerson's mature ideas and Cooley's studies of genius, emulation, fame, and leadership. Cooley's political sociology, like Emerson's, was based on a profound attachment to democratic principles. Cooley also believed, as did Emerson, that these intangible principles only remain secure as long as society emulates the great men who personify them. Building upon Emerson's conception of the heroic figure as a symbol rather than a source of social order and social change, Cooley passed on to later generations of American sociologists a conception of heroic leadership that differs sharply from the romantic visions which prevailed in Europe from Emerson's time to Cooley's own day.     

Corporate Responsibility and Australian Business: Identifying the Issue

This paper responds to a 2004 paper by Warburton et al. The paper acknowledges their exploration of the corporate responsibilities of Australian business, and the importance of such research given the social impact business has in contemporary Australian society. However, while their paper was concerned with the situation at one specific Australian business and its view of corporate responsibility, this paper attempts to utilise their findings to make a normative argument as to the possibilities for overall corporate responsibility in Australian business. In particular it considers their omission of two primary stakeholder groups, the owners and the workers, in conducting their stakeholder analysis. This paper queries whether if it is not possible to include all stakeholders, it makes sense to omit the other stakeholders too; and rather to agitate for more judicious ownership rights in pursuing the concept of corporate responsibility.     

Fecundability, coital frequency and the viability of Ova

Summary An extension of Barrett and Marshall's model expressing fecundability as a function of coital pattern is proposed. In particular, this extension includes the probability that the ovum remains alive. The extended model has been applied to Barrett and Marshall's data, a series of cycles for which basal body temperature curves and the date of coitus have been recorded. It was thus possible to estimate the daily probabilities of fertilization and, under certain assumptions, the proportion of lost ova. This proportion was estimated to be above 50 per cent, and increases with age. The increase of fecundability with frequency of intercourse is more moderate than that predicted by Barrett and Marshall's model.